“What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?” Such are the profound words of Jesus as told by the Apostle Matthew (NIV 16:26). At least one educator in the country believes that’s precisely the problem with education today, and he’s championing that message via the small private school he founded and runs in northern Westchester County, New York.

As we pass the one year anniversary of the passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, lovingly known to most as ObamaCare, and with a repeal movement trying to get into full swing, it’s worth revisiting what could have been, and what could still be. Simply repealing ObamaCare might save the country from the certain financial and health care disasters it would bring, but repeal alone doesn’t address the noble goal of ensuring as many people as possible, and the necessary goal of curbing runaway health care inflation. There is another way.

The inevitable battle between the runaway public sector and the private sector that funds it has begun. What started recently in Wisconsin will continue to spread across the country as the unworkable fiscal mathematics that are so many state budgets finally degenerate into social unrest between the payers and the payees. More specifically, the instigators of this mess, the public sector union managements and their progressive political operatives, will struggle against their most existential threat to date. It will not be pretty.

In 1987, Thomas Sowell produced his classic book “A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles.” Describing the dichotomy of the “constrained” and the “unconstrained” worldviews, Sowell’s sweeping insight explains how two broad camps in the electorate come about, with correspondingly different views of the role of government.

This conflict was laid bare for all to see in last night’s State of The Union address from President Barack Obama, and the GOP Response delivered by Obama’s ideological archnemesis, Congressman Paul Ryan.

C-SPAN might just want to change its revenue model in time to catch the fireworks and/or steel-cage death matches that will start in January when Ron Paul takes over as chair of the House Banking Committee that oversees Ben Bernanke and The Federal Reserve. This will be political theater that has the potential to top the Lincoln-Douglas debates of 1858.

But better than the theater will be Paul’s educational opportunity, if he plays his cards right.

It’s rare that a single article demonstrates such a sweeping misread of the forces of wealth in free society, but Frank Rich’s recent New York Time article, “Who Will Stand Up to the Superrich?“, proves that such events do occur.

Right of the bat, Rich draws the wrong conclusion in his account of wealthy Republican candidates who collectively spent deep into nine figures trying to get elected. I say God bless ‘em. At least we have a system that allows such people to try. Advertising, marketing and communications firms around the country positively love these people, and thousands of employees probably owe their jobs to them. Indeed, to argue that money doesn’t matter in political campaigns is to argue that the entire advertising industry is a fraud. However, where Rich says these candidates “tried to buy Senate seats and governor’s mansions”, can we finally agree that that’s simply not possible, and move on?

Like old-growth timber succumbing to a band of lumberjacks, incumbent Democrats in Congress crashed to Earth in record numbers Tuesday night. Where there’s been a steady call for politicians to “do something” about the economy, about jobs, about Wall Street, about the environment, about everything, at least one Congressional district showed that they want “something else” to be done instead. I’m referring to my own Congressional District 19 in New York, where a newcomer to politics, Dr. Nan Hayworth, ran against the Democratic incumbent, John Hall. It is a tale worth telling, and emulating.

Eleven months ago, in the face of a gauntlet of headwinds that the Obama administration was creating in front of the American job creation engine, I came to the following conclusion:

“If you were an entrepreneur, or a business owner or manager with the ability to start large new initiatives, perhaps ones requiring large numbers of new employees, in the face of the above legislative uncertainty, would you dare proceed?”

The resulting economic lockup, and the trillions of private capital sitting in fear on the sidelines, has become the story of the day.

Predicting this story was not difficult, due to the nature of The Machine itself. Driven by a lust for power, fueled by environmental extremism, economic illiteracy, and class warfare, and financed by a self-serving cycle of union cronyism, there can only be one conclusion: The Machine is antithetical to the founding principles that made this country great, and can only produce seizure. Here’s how it breaks down: Continue reading »

I am pleased to announce that I will be writing a column every other week at Forbes online called “On Civil Society”.

The first article is out there already, discussing the thought-provoking subject of “social business” as a possible alternative to “capitalism” in helping the world’s chronically poor. Why the quotes around “capitalism”? You’ll have to read the article…